March 31, 2015 (Vladimir Platov - NEO) - In early February, the Pentagon declassified reports on Israel’s nuclear weapons program which was carried out until 1987. According to these documents, Israeli scientists were capable of producing a hydrogen bomb by that time. Although these facts were largely ignored by the Western media, some analysts have noticed that the declassification of these secret reports suspiciously coincided with the recent, rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and Israel. As Tel Aviv started a massive campaign of criticism aimed at the Obama administration, both in the US media and worldwide, the Pentagon’s revelations were quick to follow. It is also noteworthy that only the facts on the Israeli nuclear weapons program were declassified, while information regarding similar activities of NATO allies (in particular Italy, France, and West Germany) remained locked up.

The 386 page report “Сritical technology assessment in Israel and Nato nations,” was prepared in 1987 by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and examined the capabilities Israel had already had at that time to produce nuclear weapons. In particular, the study underlines the fact that Israel’s secret laboratories, engaged in the development of an atomic bomb, were on par with the key research nuclear arsenals of the US: Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

According to this report, by the mid-80s Israeli experts were at the same stage of research and development of various nuclear weapons the hydrogen bomb in particular, reached by American scientists between 1955-1960. IDA experts were courageous enough to recognize that in certain areas the Israelis have even surpassed their American colleagues of the time, in particular those working in the “Raphael” Israeli secret lab, who had managed to propose unconventional ways of achieving nuclear fission that would have allowed them to create their own version of the hydrogen bomb.

March 30, 2015 (Eric Draitser - NEO) - The military intervention in Yemen by a US-backed coalition of Arab states will undoubtedly inflame the conflict both in Yemen, and throughout the region. It is likely to be a protracted war involving many actors, each of which is interested in furthering its own political and geopolitical agenda.

However, it is the international reaction to this new regional war which is of particular interest; specifically, the way in which the United States has reacted to this undeniable aggression by its Gulf allies. While Washington has gone to great lengths to paint Russia’s reunification with Crimea and its limited support for the anti-Kiev rebels of eastern Ukraine as “aggression,” it has allowed that same loaded term to be completely left out of the narrative about the new war in Yemen.

So it seems that, according to Washington, aggression is not defined by any objective indicators: use of military hardware, initiation of hostilities, etc. Rather, the United States defines aggression by the relationship of a given conflict to its own strategic interests. In Crimea and Ukraine, Russia is the aggressor because, in defending its own interests and those of Russian people, it has acted against the perceived geopolitical interests of the US. While in Yemen, the initiation by Saudi Arabia and other US-backed countries of an unprovoked war with the expressed goal of regime change, this is not aggression as it furthers Washington’s interests.

Language Versus Reality

On March 25, 2015 a coalition of Arab states initiated an aerial bombardment (as of writing there has yet to be a ground invasion, though it is expected) of Yemen for the purposes of dislodging the Houthi rebel government which had weeks before toppled the US and Saudi-backed puppet government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The war initiated by Saudi Arabia, along with its fellow Gulf monarchies and Egypt, was motivated purely by Saudi Arabia’s, and by extension the United States’, perceived interests.

March 29, 2015 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The NSA's "Equation Group" is apparently behind the infection with malware of hard drive firmware on computers used by nations considered "enemies" by the United State. The installation of the malware is believed to have required access to trade secrets of IT manufacturers as well as physical access to the soon-to-be infected computers. Popular Science in their article "The World's Most Sophisticated Malware Ever Infects Hard Drive Firmware"suggests that the NSA intercepted computers in transit through global logistical chains.

However, a simpler and more logical explanation remains, though it is one manufacturers vehemently deny; that the NSA had/has direct access to the factory floors of several IT giants. These include Western Digital Corpororation, Seagate Technology, Toshiba Corporation, IBM, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.

The infection of hardware starting on the factory floor is nothing new. Australia's Financial Review revealed in 2013 in an article titled, "Intel chips could let US spies inside: expert," that, "one of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology experts, Steve Blank, says he would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines."
Blank made his comments after it was revealed that many processors posses potential backdoors that could allow intelligence agencies to rig a computer's encryption process, rendering it virtually useless.

Such concerns have already prompted Russia to begin requiring computers used for the government sector to include Russian-made processors. With hard drives now potentially compromised, the NSA has once again given the world a reason to boycott US tech giants and those within America's sphere of influence, and replace them with locally produced alternatives manufactured under tighter security controls.

Besides access to factory floors, several high profile "cyber attacks" attributed to China targeting US tech giants, may have been in fact the NSA itself attempting to steal source code required to rewrite hard drive firmware.

Reuters in its report "Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program" would claim, "concerns about access to source code flared after a series of high-profile cyberattacks on Google Inc and other U.S. companies in 2009 that were blamed on China. Investigators have said they found evidence that the hackers gained access to source code from several big U.S. tech and defense companies."

When big US tech and defense companies aren't directly cooperating with the NSA, it appears they are pillaged regularly by them. This was also likely the case regarding Dutch SIM card manufacturer Gemalto, which was also recently compromised by the NSA and its British equivalent, GCHQ. The hijacking of the company's SIM cards required direct access to company trade secrets and likely involved the NSA and GCHQ stealing encryption keys from company servers.

March 27, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The "proxy war" model the US has been employing throughout the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even in parts of Asia appears to have failed yet again, this time in the Persian Gulf state of Yemen.

Overcoming the US-Saudi backed regime in Yemen, and a coalition of sectarian extremists including Al Qaeda and its rebrand, the "Islamic State," pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthi militias have turned the tide against American "soft power" and has necessitated a more direct military intervention. While US military forces themselves are not involved allegedly, Saudi warplanes and a possible ground force are.

Though Saudi Arabia claims "10 countries" have joined its coalition to intervene in Yemen, like the US invasion and occupation of Iraq hid behind a "coalition," it is overwhelmingly a Saudi operation with "coalition partners" added in a vain attempt to generate diplomatic legitimacy.

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had launched a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country.

The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers. The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

Proxy War Against Iran

Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in.

March 26, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Saudi Arabia, in an unprecedented act of unprovoked unilateral military aggression against Yemen by the autocratic absolute monarchy, was allegedly triggered in a US-backed attempt to restore what Riyadh is calling the "legitimate government of Yemen."

What exactly constitutes a legitimate government is not clear for a despotic regime where elections are not held, women cannot drive, and enemies of the state are beheaded in medieval displays of public barbarism not entirely unlike their ideological ambassadors among the so-called "Islamic State" or ISIS.

The Yemeni Houthi militias are in fact the only viable force fighting Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the Persian Gulf State located at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. With their recent successes on the battlefield leaving US-backed proxies in shambles, including apparently Al Qaeda itself, the West has decided it must take whatever measures necessary to stop them and reassert US interests in the region.

Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had begun military operations in Yemen, launching airstrikes in coordination with a coalition of 10 nations.

The strikes came as Yemen was hurtling closer to civil war after months of turmoil, as fighters and army units allied with the Houthi movement threatened to overrun the southern port of Aden where the besieged president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has gone into hiding.

In reality, a US-backed regime propped up by a steady stream of support afforded by America's long-standing client state, Saudi Arabia, had been ousted from power. The civil war has already been fought, and the US-backed side has decisively lost.

Instead of allowing the Yemeni people to now determine their own fate, as the West had insisted regarding Ukraine, it is clear that everything up to and including military invasion has been reserved to ensure American interests prevail.

The New "Normal?"

Saudi Arabia has exercised unilateral military force against a neighboring sovereign state without any notable threat being presented to its own national security. This is naked military aggression by every count. And while the US and UK have openly supported Saudi Arabia in its actions, not even the veneer of UN approval has been applied to this act of war.

Is this the new "normal?" Bombing and invading a country because a foreign power doesn't like the government, without even the semblance of international law being applied? Judging by the "calm" supportive response from the United States and British governments, and the muted tone of what is essentially a naked military invasion of a sovereign country, it is clear that we are expected to believe as much.

In contrast, consider the unhinged hysteria seen across the West when Russian troops uneventfully entered Crimea and held a peaceful referendum that overwhelmingly sought to return the peninsula back to Russia.

Saudi Arabia has begun bombing Yemen, and has plans to send in troops in addition to the already ongoing covert and semi-covert support the regime and its US sponsors have been providing proxy forces within Yemen from the US-engineered "Arab Spring" onward.

The dangerous precedent set by Saudi Arabia's actions will surely be jealously defended as a "West and allies" only option. Russia will not now be afforded the same leeway in the Western press to enter into Ukraine and bomb the regime occupying Kiev into oblivion. Nor would a joint Iranian-Syrian-Lebanese-Iraqi military force be allowed to sweep through the Levant and secure up to and perhaps even beyond the Turkish-Syrian border since NATO and the government of Turkey have for four years now failed to do so themselves.

The interesting question will be though, what if Russia or nations fighting in the Levant decide to do this anyway? What room will the West now have to condemn it considering what they have allowed Saudi Arabia, by every measure an illegitimate despotic dictatorship, to invade a neighboring state with absolute impunity, even with avid, eager Western support? Is the US prepared to accept the consequences of the dangerous new "normal" it has just created?